Rating: 
Summary: Talk about one-sided!
Review: There were parts of this book that I thought were ridiculous. I think Ms. Ryan has an eating disorder herself - all she did was talk about EXACT pounds of each of the gymnasts, she mentioned 2 pound differences in some cases. She herself was obsessed with the 'weight' part of gymnastics. My 2 year old daughter has been taking gymnastics 2 times a week since she was 17 months old. It has been one of the best things in our lives. I, too, did gymnastics growing up. This book is already getting dated. Even in the 2002 US Nationals, you could see the women looking more...womanly, which is a positive thing! Annia Hatch was 24 years old, that is not a child. Yesterday the World Championships were televised on ESPN...one of the German gymnasts was 27 YEARS OLD and had already had a child. Gymnastics is returning to women, there is no doubt about it. The women I've seen competing in gymnastics (and at my daughter's gym) are no waifs anymore and neither is my daughter for that matter. This book was so one-sided that it was almost tacky. She placates the reader ONCE in the intro (saying that she is only referring to elite gymnastics and not gymnastics in general) but it is clear that she hates the sport in general. She makes the discipline and structure that these young women have in their lives seem like a BAD thing (like someone shouldn't put their all into their dreams). My daughter is not sitting in front of a Play-Station all day long so I guess she's being deprived of her childhood. She actually gets EXERCISE and has incredible control over her body. She fails to mention the life lessons that gymnastics teaches or that the 'eating disorder' rate increases among young women IN GENERAL in these age groups. I find it interesting that her stories were all 'hearsay' as well. I'm wondering how many practices she actually sat in on? She looked for problems, and she found them. Now I challenge her to write a book about the positives of gymnastics/figure skating in general. If they were such horrible sports, I think the media would have jumped on this story long ago. Talk about writing a book with a bias! She jumps all over Bela Karolyi, too. I recommend reading 'Feel No Fear' by Bela Karolyi and maybe she'll have more compassion for his point of view. This man should sue her for defamation of character.
Rating:
Summary: An interesting look behind the scenes of elite gymnasts
Review: This book puts a very negative slant on what Olympic athletes have to go through to become Olympic athletes. It seemed as though the author was only looking for the worst experiences of athletes; I would have like to see a more unbiased approach to looking at elite training. There are few anecdotes about girls who were happy with their experiences, but those girls usually didn't make it to the Olympics but rather to college with full ride scholarships. The author makes it sound as if to be an Olympic athlete, you have to give up everything else in your life. I grew tired of reading the same examples over and over. Usually a story was mentioned once vaguely such referring to a gymnast or a skater, and then again taking up a whole chapter with all the details, and then again as another example of something bad that happened to someone. Most of the book refers to athletes from the late 70's through the 80's, with very little more modern than that. I think reading this book would discourage anyone from allowing his or her daughter to seriously strive for the Olympics, and that's unfortunate.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't Read It!
Review: I totally HATED this book. All Joan Ryan talks about is how gymnasts and figure skating are abusive, bad sports. Well, I have NEVER been told in gymnastics to lose weight, or to keep focusing on winning. I love the sport, and Joan Ryan seems to be despising it. Also, Joan Ryan talks about the same things over and over again, AND HER MAIN FOCUS IS GYMNASTICS!. I don't reccommend it to any one involved in gymnastics or figure skaters. I agree with everyone who hates the book.
Rating:
Summary: very bad book
Review: I understand that figure skating and gymnastics are both very demanding sports, but this woman did nothing at all but talk about how horrible everything about the sport was. I myself am a gymnast, and anyone who has not loved the sport themselves probably would not understand. Yes, some go to extreme measures for the olympic games and other important competitions, but that is their own desicion and it should not be criticized by others. They chose to do that! This book does, however, show how difficult it is to have a life in these sports.
Rating: 
Summary: About This Book
Review: I was elite level in gymnastics and I never found any of my coaches the way Mrs Ryan describes them here. I actually know people who have the coaches mentioned in this book and as far as I know they haven't been hurt or injured by the coach. I dispise this book and she needed to talk to those who have the brighter side of gymnastics and ice skating both. Not all coaches in the sport are tyrants...even at Olympic level!
Rating: 
Summary: You gotta be thin to win
Review: Prior to 1972, gymnastics was a rather ho-hum sport that appeared to be dominated by eastern European robots with as much appeal as wind-up toys. Especially in the Olympics, the big draws were swimming and track, with gymnastics coverage relegated to the back of the sports pages. But at the Munich Olympics in 1972, among the Russian gymnasts was a tiny 17 year old sprite named Olga Korbut who looked like an elf dangling from a charm bracelet and wowed the crowds in the gym, changing the face of gymnastics overnight. Never mind that Korbut wasn't the best gymnast on the Russian team; she was a natural showgirl. The crowds ate her up. Olga's size (84 pounds) didn't hurt her appeal either. There was a new face on female gymnastics and it was cute, petite, and above all, thin. This was reinforced four years later at Montreal by Nadia Comaneci, who was not only petite, she was barely 14 years old. Combining a formidable talent with an insatiable coach, Nadia tore up the gym to win three gold medals. The formula for a winning gymnast was thus established: take them as young as possible, feed them as little as possible, and train them as hard as possible. Some girls thrived under this regime; many more cracked (or cracked up). Ryan goes to convincing lengths in describing the results of this training on bodies that were for the most part far too young to handle it: eating disorders (including at least one death from anorexia); severe injuries, including permanent paralysis; and damaged psyches from dealing with demanding coaches and obsessed parents who live vicariously through their children. She also points up that many coaches do not have the requisite training and experience to coach children without subjecting them to serious physical and emotional harm. And she tells of the disillusionment felt by many young gymnasts when nature inevitably catches up, the inches and pounds increase, and they are jettisoned for a younger, shorter and thinner crop of aspiring competitors. Although Ryan's book is supposed to be about gymnasts and figure skaters, the latter don't get nearly as much attention, perhaps because they don't suffer as severe injuries as gymnasts and generally are older when they compete at the Olympics. But her argument that age works against these girls does point up the case of Michelle Kwan, who was a 13 year old sensation at the world championships and stayed at the top of her sport until she was nineteen, when she started growing upwards and outwards and was upstaged and defeated by a 15 year old challenger named Tara Lipinski. Ryan has researched her book carefully and perhaps it has had a beneficial effect; the minimum age for Olympic gymnastic competition has been raised to sixteen, and at the 2000 Olympic games, the girls looked much better fed than they did in 1996. The one caveat I have about this book is that Ryan seems not to have to talked to any competitors who enjoyed their sport, who persevered because they enjoyed it and not because they were pushed or bullied into it. Including some of these athletes would have made for a more balanced and ultimately a better book.
Rating: 
Summary: One of the most honest books about the sport
Review: This book is one of the most honest accounts of gymnastics that has ever been written. I was a competitive gymnast for several years and experienced first-hand some of the accounts in this book. I almost couldn't read certain parts of it because it brought back so many memories. Competitive gymnastics has shaped so much of who I am today and it was a wonderful experience to read about that world from the perspective of someone else. It really gave me insight into my own feelings about my gymnastics past. Bravo Joan Ryan for an excellent reading experience!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Mixed Bag
Review: While there were certainly horror stories in this book that we don't see portrayed in the media, for the most part, this book lists the same five or six over and over again. So Bela Karolyi's a tyrant and obsessed with winning.....tell me something I don't know. The other problem with this book is that she devotes nearly all of it to gymnastics. Were there not enough abuses to report in figure skating, or did she simply include figure skating for the same reasons she states in her book that make skating so popular: it has more sex appeal than gymnastics? She bemons skating's transition to a "child's sport", but ignores the fact that although the prepubescent jumping beans can do well in competition, they almost never beat the mature artists. Ryan also never tells the positive side of the story. A great many skaters and gymnasts love their sports and come away enriched, not scarred. The parental obsession found in skating and gymnastics is the same as what I see in any other sport. That said, poor journalism aside, the book makes for an entertaining read. I always find myself rereading it during the off season when I need a skating fix.
Rating:
Summary: Before you criticise...
Review: I've been reading all the reviews for this book and am struck by the number of people who say that the book criticises the whole sport of gymnastics and how they/their child have had positive experiences. READ THE BOOK PROPERLY! The author clearly states that gymnastics and figure skating can be rewarding and beneficial for children, and that her book is only focusing on the pressures of gymnastics and skating at an elite/olympic level. Also, yes, eating disorders are not restricted to just gymnasts and skaters, but research has clearly proven that the percentage of gymnasts and skaters suffering from an eating disorder is far, far above the average rate. The atrocities outlined in this book unfortunately do happen and burying our heads in the sand is only going to ensure that they continue to happen.
Rating:
Summary: A fun read but not exactly professional reportage
Review: The title is a little misleading as probably 90% of Ryan's text is concerned with gymnastics. The new edition includes a few new photographs of figure skaters Michelle Kwan and Tara Lipinski, but there isn't anything new about these skaters in the text. The book isn't particularly well written; Ryan cites the same examples over and over, and there's some awkward prose here that an editor might have tidied up, especially for a second edition. Ryan discusses gymnasts who were seriously injured, suffered from severe eating disorders or became suicidal-- and because she doesn't give much space to gymnasts who have not been destroyed by the sport, it's easy to dismiss this as a sensational, tabloid-style account. For instance, Ryan mentions that Mary Lou Retton could "laugh off" comments about her weight while other girls were devastated and driven to eating disorders-- but she didn't interview Retton or anyone else who was satisfied with her experiences (with the possible exception of Betty Okino). Allowing both sides to express their views could have made for a more balanced, interesting and credible book.
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